View the contents of printed documents

When controlling printing on printers, you may need to view the contents of the printed document. There are several options for saving the printed document as an image or PDF.

1. O&K Printer Viewer – program for viewing printed files, saving them to PDF or graphical format.

O&K Printer Viewer can convert printer command data into graphical format.
The most common printer drivers are supported, such as PCL5-6, Postscript, HP-GL/2, HP, Samsung, Dell, Epson, Fuji-Xerox bitmap drivers and others.

O&K Printer Viewer is only a viewer. You need to save the printed document somehow in order to open and view the contents.

The easiest way, the use of saving printed documents in the printer queue:

  • In the printer properties, check "Keep printed documents".
  • In O&K Printer Viewer menu File - Open Print Queue, select the printed document to view.

Pros:

  • There is no need to install any agent on the user's PC, just enable saving printed documents in the shared printer queue on the server.

Cons:

  • There is no automatic interception and saving of printer jobs. You must enable document saving for each printer.
  • With large print volumes, stored documents in the queue accumulate very quickly.
  • A very awkward search.

2. O&K Print Router – program to redirect prints and save their copy to PDF.

The O&K Print Router is a virtual printer that can print documents to a physical printer, saving a copy of the contents to PDF.

The easiest scenario to use:

  • The O&K Print Router is set as the default printer on the PC with physical printers connected.
  • You set the rules for printing and saving a copy of documents. For example, each color document sent to the O&K Print Router will be printed only on a color printer, each black and white document only on a black and white printer. For each printing event a PDF with a copy of the printed one will be created.

Pros:

  • Easy setup and automatic PDF creation of each printed document.

Cons:

  • The O&K Print Router must be installed on the user's PC
  • The user can print to a physical printer directly, bypassing the creation of a PDF.

3. O&K Print Watch – software to monitor printing, save each print job to PDF and much more.

O&K Print Watch - has a rich functionality for controlling and intercepting printing. Here we will look at saving the contents of printed documents:

  • Install O&K Print Watch on the print server or on a PC with a locally connected printer.
  • Set to save images for the entire print server, or only for specific printers/users.
  • Each printed document is automatically captured and its contents saved.
  • In the print history report, the O&K Printer Viewer, or the XPS Viewer, is run to view the document.


Pros:

  • There is no need to install any agent on the user's PC.
  • Automatic document capturing and saving.
  • Search and filter by users, user groups, printers.
  • Full integration with O&K Printer Viewer.
  • The O&K Print Watch license includes the use of the O&K Printer Viewer, no additional purchase necessary.

Cons:

  • None.